Mobile communication is nowadays in most cases characterized by a connection-oriented communication between two communication terminals. In such a way, a mobile communication terminal establishes a bearer channel to a base transceiver station (BTS), via which wireless communication is possible. On the network side, the base transceiver station (BTS), the base station controller (BSC) and various other network nodes (HLR, VLR, GNS, GGSN, etc.) enable establishing a connection-oriented communication channel with a further communication terminal, which may be a mobile communication terminal or a fixed line communication terminal.
Data packets are exchanged between the mobile terminal and the base transceiver station, which data packets correspond to modulated speech data or other data originating from the mobile communication terminal or to be terminated within the mobile communication terminal.
There are nowadays several standardized protocols established, via which a mobile communication terminal is capable of communicating with a base transceiver station. Such protocols are, for instance 3G, UMTS, LTE, 4G and many others. Besides these cellular communication protocols, there are other protocols in place, via which a communication between a mobile terminal and a transceiver is possible, which are, for instance Wireless LAN, TETRA, Bluetooth, Near Field Communication (NFC) and many others.
All of the mentioned communication protocols allow establishing a bearer channel, via which data can be transported bi-directionally. All of the named protocols fall within the scope of the present application.
However, there is a shortcoming in current communication infrastructure, that once a bearer channel has been established by a mobile communication terminal, this bearer channel is to be used for all subsequent communication. Thus, all data packets of a communication stream are sent via this particular bearer channel. Moreover, it may happen that a user is bound to a certain service provider, which service provider dictates, which frequencies to be used and also, which protocol to be used. However, do to constraints on the air interface, different wireless bearer channels have different quality parameters. It thus may happen that at a single location, a user may have weak signal strength of a service of a first technology by a first service provider, whereas the signal strength of a service of the first or a second technology by a second service provider is much higher and communication via such a bearer, i.e. the network of the second service provider, would be more beneficial. Thus, since the user is depended on his service provider and/or bound to a certain technology, even if there is a stronger signal of a different service provider and/or different technology, the user might not be allowed to access this better signal. This restriction may be hardware or software dependent.
It is thus the aim of the present application to provide for improved communication capabilities using a mobile communication terminal.